A Gloucestershire farmer living with the realities of bovine TB

TB TESTING A “HELLISH” WEEK

Tuesday, gathering all the cattle in for testing, it’s never easy when grass is abundant, but they all came in quietly. We set about the all too familiar task of bTB testing. All done by 1.00 pm and its back to grain drying ,straw clearing and harvesting between the showers.
The days between the test I try not to look for lumps on the cattle as it’s easy to misinterpret what you see, however human nature got the better of me, I noticed a bottom lump on one of my best Sussex cows, heart sinks and despair sets in, the thought of losing such a fine, gentle kind natured a quite adorable cow is all to much. So we are back on the 60 day testing treadmill a hellish thought.
Friday test reading day. We start gathering the cattle at first light, there not at all keen to come in , having been in on Tuesday there reluctance and displeasure is very apparent ……as is mine, there is no pleasure of job satisfaction in bTB testing at all its just misery and aggravation.. We have a good team to help and our system for handling cattle is working well we are checking and reading about 90 cattle an hour. We have done about 100 cattle when No 37 or Mrs Cow as she known comes down the race, I can tell by the expression on the testers face it’s not good news, Churri reads from the test chart that the remarks says “existing lumps” some optimism for a moment, I look with the tester and she has a bottom lump on her clip mark, this was not the existing lump and she is a reactor.This cow will be culled by order of DEFRA. The tester puts the all too familiar green ear tag in her left ear.

Cattle can pass tb to badgers and badgers can pass tb to cattle FACT.

Badgers have protected status; they continue to spread tb across the country FACT

Nowhere in the world has tb been successfully controlled without tackling the wildlife FACT

We culled over 33000 cattle last year to “control” tb FACT

The current policy to control bTB is failing spectacularly FACT

The governments dithering on controlling badgers is righting a death sentence for over 33000 cattle just like Mrs Cow FACT